I24 Overview and Musings

Why it seems like only yesterday when I was talking about the upgrade from I3 to I4 (PvP! Body part sliders!). And here we are, a scant seven (!) years later, talking about I24:

Issue 24: Resurgence is the next major free City of Heroes Freedom™ content update. Issue 24 provides new story arcs for a variety of character levels, ongoing power and Enhancement upgrades, and continuing premier content for our VIP players. Now that the Praetorian War is over, former adversaries work shoulder to shoulder to rebuild in the aftermath. As refugees from Galaxy City and Praetoria flood the streets of Paragon City, fresh conflicts bubble to the surface and new enemies emerge, setting the stage for a coming storm.

If I said I haven’t been involved in the Praetoria War, does that make me a bad hero?

Power and Enhancement Upgrades

Blaster Upgrades:  Blasters receive a substantial increase to their damage and toughness. All Blaster secondary power sets now include a new element: Sustain. The Sustain attribute grants increased regeneration and recovery to upgrade to the following Blaster secondary powers; Touch of Fear, Blazing Aura, Chilling Embrace, Cloaking Device, Lightning Clasp, and Conserve Power. Blasters who already have these powers do not need to respec in order to benefit from Sustain. The attack range of some powerful Blaster attacks has also been doubled, while all Snipe powers can now be instantly fired under certain conditions.

My blasters will certainly enjoy this — instantsnipe (if you have a high enough to-hit bonus going) will be really keen on teams, where the build-up time for snipe powers is often difficult to make happen.

Having the short-range blasts become standard-range is pretty awesome, too. Sounds like it will be time for some respecs for Torchielle and Miss Crackle, among others.

Power Pool Customization: Players who have unlocked tailor access can now change the colors of their Ancillary, Patron, and Power pools, allowing customization of powers such as Super Speed, Hasten, and Soul Tentacles.

THANK YOU, JESUS!  Or whoever decided to prioritize this.  Assuming that I can actually choose “Minimal FX” for things like Hasten and Superspeed.

Power Pool Upgrades:  The Concealment, Fighting, Leadership, Medicine, and Presence pools have received an additional power each. They are trainable at level 14 if you own two other powers in that pool. Each power pool also has a new fifth power that can now persuade opponents to disregard a character, transform into an unrelenting berserker, or dramatically improve a team’s Endurance recovery.

Power Pools haven’t been touched since practically Day 1.  The changes that have been discussed (more details elsewhere) will also trigger some serious respecs, for all characters, I suspect.

Improved Enhancement Set Bonuses: Invention Origin Enhancement set bonuses, such as XP debt reduction and specific mesmerization/mental control resistances, have been replaced with more useful set bonuses. These new set bonuses provide more powerful resistance against a broader variety of damage.

That’s … probably good.  Though no doubt it will throw the markets into a tizzy for a month or three as people buy the new hot thing and decline to buy the old, not-quite-as-relatively-good thing.

New Invention Origin Sets: Four new Invention Origin Enhancement sets debut with Issue 24. Annihilation (targeted AoE), Unbreakable Guard (damage resistance), Reactive Defenses (defense), and Preventive Medicine (healing). These new sets all offer different and specific bonuses, such as decreasing an opponent’s resistance, increasing a character’s maximum hit points, improve resistances, and even granting an absorption shield.

More IO sets are definitely a good thing (see also, “markets in a tizzy”).

New VIP Bonuses

Martial Assault and Martial Combat (Free for VIPs): Dominators and Blasters can now combine ranged powers with melee martial arts attacks. Martial Assault combines ancient weapons with deadly physical attacks. It is available for all Dominators. Martial Combat focuses on using the energy within to perform remarkable feats. It is available for all Blasters.

As previously noted, blapper-tastic!

Actually, it should work well for a variety of purposes, as some blasters and doms just don’t need “powered” secondaries for their character concepts.  (I have several that have Energy as their secondary, simply for the “go away!” first level punch — which Martial Combat now has as well as other useful things.)

More Lore Incarnate Abilities (Free for VIPs): Level 50 Incarnates can now craft new Lore abilities that let them summon powerful members of the Banished Pantheon, Knives of Vengeance, Talons of Vengeance, or the Tsoo as allies in combat.

Still find the Level 50 Incarnate stuff confusing as hell (yes, what we need is another power / crafting system).  So no interest here, aside from thinking the above concept sounds cool.

New Incarnate Story Arc (Free for VIPs): The majority of Praetoria except for one last bit of civilization outside of the city has been destroyed. This tiny corner of civilization crumbles from constant attacks by the Devouring Earth, and its days are numbered unless someone with the power of an Incarnate fights against the forces of Hamidon! Characters who are ready for this great challenge can contact the Vanguard scientist Number Six in the Rikti War Zone.

Wait, what?

Oh, man, did I sleep through the world being destroyed again?

Have to wonder, what does this actually mean for Praetoria (as in “can I still run characters through Praetoria like before, or is that whole zone now gone?”).  I’ll have to ask the CoH G+ team on Friday …

New Tier 9 Tech Knight Costume Set (Exclusive to VIPs): Tier 9 VIP players in the Paragon Rewards program can unlock the new Tech Knight Costume Set. The Tech Knight costume set fuses cosmic energy and high-tech power, allowing players to create truly fantastic warriors for good or evil.

New costumes = always good.

New Stories and Adventures for All Levels

Kings Row in Crisis (Levels 7-20): With Galaxy City destroyed, the displaced and homeless flood into neighboring Kings Row to find shelter, work, and protection. The beleaguered Paragon Police Department already has its hands full, and the fallout is that the city’s gangs are thriving and enlarging their turf. Back Alley Brawler and the Regulators have put out a call for a new team of Heroes to stop the villainous gang members and to protect the refugees.

Good to see a new reason to go back to Kings Row.  Now if only the Hollows weren’t a ghost town …

The Giant Monster, Paladin, is also taking advantage of this chaos to try to destroy Kings Row. Paladin and his minions now rampage throughout High Park, seeking to claim it. The heroic Shining Stars stand up against Paladin’s mechanical might, but they need help from the Heroes to finish Paladin off.

Oooh … nice to see the Shining Stars mixing it up, plus some sort of way of duking it out with Paladin that doesn’t requiring finding a critical mass of heroes in KR?  Nice.

Brickstown’s New Alliances (Levels 30-50): The remnants of the Praetorian Army now work with the Vanguard in Brickstown. Forging an alliance of Praetorians and Heroes from Primal Earth, the Vanguard seeks to fight the emerging threats from both Praetoria and Primal Earth. All interested Heroes should contact Provost Marchand in Brickstown.

Hmmm. Okay, makes sense. Bricks is sort of a dumping ground at the moment, so giving it a new feel is worthwhile.  Wonder how that will work in conjunction with the Zig?

To add to that, the Praetorians are not the only issue to worry about in Brickstown. Prisoners have broken out of the Zig maximum security prison! In the new Prison Break zone event, Heroes have their hands full with stopping fugitive super-powered criminals from wreaking havoc throughout Brickstown.

Ha! Asked and answered.  This makes great sense, and sounds like it should be fun.

St. Martial’s Secrets (Levels 30-50): Arachnos has set up a portal to Praetoria with the intent to loot that devastated world. However, Villains have determined that they can slip into the war-ravaged land themselves to loot Praetoria before Arachnos does! What Villains discover in Praetoria surprises even them and may turn out to be something that helps their ongoing schemes in the Rogue Isles!

Adding to the mayhem in St. Martial’s is Family Raid, a new zone event. Longbow has discovered that the Family, a criminal organization, is holding illegal weapons throughout its casinos in St. Martial. Longbow is staging attacks to recover those weapons, but Villains with foresight can stop the attack and even steal the weapons for their own use!

Don’t have many active redside characters, but these sound like fun additional material.

All in all, a worthwhile Issue, I’d say.  Game on!

What’s the Matter with Penelope Yin?

The Paragon Studios team does a “Freedom Friday” weekly quasi-chat on Google Plus, answering questions that people pose, etc.  Today, after getting my actual game question answer, I made the following observation:

Just some feedback on the current splash screen, btw: it’s awful.  Not only am I less than thrilled with young Penelope Yin going from t-shirted and jeans-wearing teen to not-quite-dominatrix-geared hero, but you have her up there in one of those stereotypical super-heroine twisted-spine positions so that the viewer can conveniently see both her butt and her boobs.

Bad show. I expect better from Paragon.

Here’s the image (reversed, as it’s the current background for the cityofheroes.com site):

So some background. Penelope Yin first shows up in the game as the heroes are hitting level 15 or so, in Faultline.  She’s a t-shirt-and-jeans teenager trying to deal with some problems in that zone. She also can psychically control Clockwork.

Over time it’s developed that Penelope is one of the most powerful psychics in the world, and with recent events she’s joined the Freedom Phalanx as a full-blown hero.

She’s also managed to pick up an awful costume. It’s not quite dominatrix-wear.  Not quite.  But between the thigh-high red high-heeled boots, the not-really-bare stockinged legs under a red bikini bottom, and the gartered crop-top bare-belly look above the waist … it’s just a silly costume, almost as though she were trying to find a parody of a Sexy Super-Heroine Outfit to show off in.

And then there’s the picture above.

On the splash screen (which I couldn’t find an image of), she’s  leaping forward to go toe to toe with some villain (on the web page, he’s off facing the other direction to match her).  But look at it.  First off, her legs are impossibly long. But secondly, she’s in that all-too-stereotypically awful Contorted Female Super-Hero Display Pose.  The one where, through a twist of the spine, she manages to be pointing both her butt and her boobs toward you.

And this was a teenaged girl not very long ago, and now is one of Paragon’s pre-eminent heroes.  A role model, in-game and potentially for other teens (or tweens) in real life.

And this is now the splash screen that pops up for the next N months (until the next issue) every time you go into the game or change servers.

As Margie phrased it, “Probably not appropriate and an ugly costume.”

As Isaac Sher, a commenter on the same thread, put it:

Again, let’s set aside how her costume looks — her face does not say “I’m about to fight a dangerous foe”, it says to me “Tee Hee, I’m posing for a swimsuit issue photo shoot!  YAY!”  It’s really out of place.   Also, her body is, as others have said, twist so that she’s thrusting both her posterior and her breasts towards the camera, and it just looks grotesque and unnatural — and just seems like she’s there to Look Sexy For Male Players rather than Be An Awesome Hero For Justice.

Yeah, I actually engendered a reaction — a couple of commenters and some +1s on my remarks.

Now, I certainly don’t mind a bit of cheesecake (mmmmmm, cheesecake), though in general my heroines tend to be a bit more covered up.  But there’s two things going on here that bug me, and they’re somewhat intertwined:

Penelope in her more teen-aged, less thigh-high-boots days.
Penelope's new outfit, as rendered in the game.

First off, it’s just an ugly costume. And silly.  I mean, thigh-highs, and the bikini/stockings, and the armor bits on her arms and shoulders and face … and then a bare midriff (with straps holding up her pants?).   Nice costume pieces, but the whole is much less than the parts.  And it — especially as painted (and posed) above, just comes off as a tawdry sexualization.

Which even then wouldn’t be horrific (just a scosh distasteful in some fashion), except I still think of Penelope as a teenager.  I have no idea whether she is or not (she’s a “teenager” and a “girl” in the Faultline thread, and it’s ostensibly now 4-5 years later — though you can still find her there, I believe), and certainly she has gone through a lot of big experiences since then.  But I still associate her with being younger than I should be leching after (or being hinted that I should be leching after).

And even if it’s just “I knew her when she was young and innocent,” it still just jars seeing her in that splash screen every time I fire up the game, angling her butt and boobs at the viewer.

And what did Paragon have to say?

Thanks for the feedback! We’ll convey your thoughts on the art back to the dev team. We’re extremely happy and lucky to have a team of talented artists working on City of Heroes Freedom, and we’re grateful for all the hard work they put in to make City of Heroes an even greater game than ever before.

Um …

To which I replied:

The art team’s certainly talented, and that’s part of what makes the game a deserved success.  I just think in this case (and esp. for something as pervasive as the splash screen) there was some bad judgment (aesthetic and otherwise) involved.

Which, apparently, was ’nuff said, since the conversation faded out after that.

For more on this kind of contorted female posing thing, check out More super-hero posing goodness and Contorting a dead, sexy horse, two entries on my main blog from a few months back.

Level Pacts and the Future

Participated in a Freedom Friday with Paragon on Google Plus today, and finally remembered to ask my favorite question.

* * *

Me: So … when will Level Pacts return? My wife and I do a lot of duoing in the game, and LPs made this a lot more fun (we could solo while the other was away, one of us could opportunistically hunt, etc., without worrying about getting out of sync with leveling).

We still have a number of toons from when LP was put in, and they function just fine. It’s just the ones before (and since) that it’s a problem with.

I understand there are some difficulties with it being abused, but surely there are some ways it could be restored on a restricted fashion. Though I’d also like to see it available at any level — I’d be willing to have my lvl 20 drop to lvl 18 to get pacted with someone at that level.
Collapse this comment

City of Heroes Freedom: +Dave Hill : We’d really like to get level pacts working, but they’ll take some time to work out right, and we don’t have an ETA for it at the moment. Hopefully soon! I can understand your desire to have them back. We know they were really popular.

Me: +City of Heroes Freedom – Thanks, I’m glad to know they’re still on the map. Is the problem a technical one, or dealing with unintended (and abusable) consequences? I assume it’s the latter (since the existing LPs were allowed to continue), but it’s hard to believe the latter couldn’t be handled through some limits, cool-offs, etc. I’d rather have a reasonably limited way of doing it than not have it at all.

Je Saist: +Dave Hill: they were disabled, if memory serves, in order to prevent abuse of the pact-system by F2P players. There were also comments that Level Pacts were being envisioned as a VIP benefit only, and I also believe comments were made that the underlying leveling engine itself would need some work in order to isolate level-pacts to VIP’s only.

City of Heroes Freedom: +Dave Hill & +Je Saist : This is roughly correct, though I’m personally fuzzy on the details. I believe there were technical issues involved with level pacts when there were multiple tiers of players, and we need time to work these out so that a robust system can be created.

Me: Fair enough. I’m surprised it’s difficult to ID VIP (or F2P) players, but I’ve done enough development work in legacy systems to be not too surprised.

As I said, I’d settle for a less robust, basic system in the interim than one that’s as polished and powerful as we’d all like to see. But I also appreciate you guys wanting to do it once and do it right. As long as it’s on the docket, I’ll try to be patient. After all, its an excellent game even without it. 🙂

* * *

I certainly don’t know about CoX internals, but if there are “technical issues with level pacts when there were multiple tiers of players,” then simply don’t have those for the moment (if I understood completely what that means, of course) until it gets fixed.